MARUAH Singapore

August 13, 2009

To: The Member States of the UN General Assembly

Your Excellency,

As the Human Rights Council prepares for its 12th regular session, the first session with the new members elected in May 2009, we write to ask your government to commit itself publicly as a matter of national policy to support a competitive, genuinely-contested and principled electoral process for future Human Rights Council elections.

General Assembly resolution 60/251, which established the Council, specifies that Council members shall be elected directly and individually, and that, in casting their ballots, Member States “shall take into account the contribution of candidates to the promotion and protection of human rights.” These provisions reflect the spirit of the resolution: UN Member States must be given a real choice in order to elect members that will “uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights” and “fully cooperate with the Council.”
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The Singapore Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism (MARUAH) would like to invite you to a Consultation Workshop: “Engaging the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) – The People’s Views”. Read more in our e-flyer.

Details below
Saturday, 22 August 2009
8.30 am to 3.45 pm
Novotel Hotel, Clarke Quay
177A River Valley Road
Singapore, 179031

Sign up online here

Alternatively, you can fill up the registration form. Please submit this as soon as possible.

MARUAH (Singapore Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism) would like to invite you, the public, to a Consultation Workshop: “Engaging the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) – The People’s Views”.

The Terms of Reference(TOR) for the ASEAN Human Rights Body, as enshrined in Article 14 of the ASEAN Charter, have been accepted recently by ASEAN Foreign Ministers. This October the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) will be born at the ASEAN Summit. This is a considerable breakthrough for all countries in ASEAN.

This Commission can only get better when stakeholders are engaged. In the next three months countries will select their government representative to the Commission. The TOR will go into effect from October. There are other sectoral bodies on women, children and migrant workers.

How will the people sector engage in this process? How will the people sector ensure that the Commission will become an enabling instrument? Here’s the chance to be engaged. Please come. Please share your thoughts. Please be a stakeholder in this process.

Please download the e-flyer here. The reply slip will be uploaded shortly.

This event is sponsored by Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, and partnered with the Insitute of Southeast Asian Studies and ASEAN Studies Centre.

UN Human Rights Chief welcomes important step towards establishment of ASEAN Commission on Human Rights

GENEVA — UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Wednesday welcomed the endorsement by ASEAN Foreign Ministers of the terms of reference for the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, which she called “an important step forward” in the establishment of a new mechanism to protect and promote the human rights of people living in the ASEAN region.
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The human rights balancing act
by Braema Mathiaparanam

THE ASEAN Human Rights Body is finally on its way to realisation now that all the foreign ministers of the Association of South-east Asian Nations have endorsed the Terms of Reference (TOR) at their meeting in Phuket.

Named the ASEAN Inter-Governmental Human Rights Commission, the body is slated to be officially established at the ASEAN summit in October.
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Join our facebook group here.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the democratically-held elections in 1990, has been under house arrest for almost two decades. On 18th May 2009, she was charged with breaching the terms of her house arrest and stood trial. She has borne her trials with dignity. Yet they continue unabated. The world has honoured her with a Nobel Peace Prize and lobbied tirelessly for her freedom but there is a growing helplessness towards the situation as the Myanmar junta continues to keep her in detention without trial.

We find the situation untenable. It will be a grave injustice if we all were to stand by and let this courageous citizen spend all her days as a prisoner. She is due for release at the end of May.

Many among us know that it will not happen. We need to show ASEAN solidarity at the civil society level and act together to ask for her freedom.

Let us then come together throughout ASEAN on the same day at the same time to demand for her freedom. Can we show solidarity by wearing some yellow in our clothing, hold a candlelight vigil and let off 19 yellow-coloured balloons (one for each year she has been under arrest) with her portrait, into the skies?

Come.
Have your silence heard.

This event is jointly organised by MARUAH(SWGAHRM) with other regional NGOs.

Attached is an advisory for all parties interested in joining us for the event.

From 25 April to 1 May 2009

COMMUNICATIONS from 22 to 28 April 2009

• 14 communications (10 Urgent Appeals and 4 Allegation Letters) sent to 12 countries
• 11 joint communications
• Of 14 individual cases, 4 concerned women

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Please see below for a press release from the Philippine Foreign Secretary Alberto G. Romulo on the ASEAN Human Rights Body.

ASEAN People Deserves Full Human Rights—Romulo

April 8, 2009 by DFA-PISU

PR-169-09, 08 April 2009—Foreign Secretary Alberto G. Romulo called on the member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to hasten the creation of an effective and credible ASEAN human rights body to fully protect and promote individual and collective freedoms in the region.
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WORKING GROUP FOR AN ASEAN HUMAN RIGHTS MECHANISM

A SUBMISSION ON THE OCCASION OF THE DIALOGUE WITH THE HIGH LEVEL PANEL ON AN ASEAN HUMAN RIGHTS BODY
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
20 March 2009

1. The Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism (Working Group) reiterates its request for the draft of the terms of reference (TOR) of an ASEAN human rights body to be made public in order to facilitate a more meaningful dialogue among the relevant stakeholders of a rules-based ASEAN. This is also in line with the purpose of ASEAN to promote a people-oriented ASEAN in which all sectors of society are encouraged to “participate in, and benefit from, the process of ASEAN integration and community-building.” Surely, a more open dialogue and discussion of the draft of the TOR will also contribute “to strengthening democracy, enhancing good governance and the rule of law, and to promoting and protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms, with due regard to the rights and responsibilities of the Member States of ASEAN.”
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